(571) Black Orchid - Part 2

The bonus of having a two parter adventure is that there is very little time for padding so its easy to enjoy it more. If I look back at previous two-parters, they have all rated quite highly. I commented on the previous episode that this was already a better story for Terence Dudley than ‘Four to Doomsday’ and that’s definelty the case by the end of this episode. This is the 38^th episode for Matthew Waterhouse which ties him with Roger Delgado and Maureen O’Brien. If your interested Janet Fielding is on 22 episodes (3 behind Caroline John) and Sarah Sutton is on 23.

The first that tis dealt with the discovery that the Doctor made of the dead servant that was stuffed in the cupboard. The Doctor comes also comes across Lady Cranleigh who appears to be determined to hide things and the first chance she gets she achieves this. The fun thing at the beginning of the episode is that Adric is still eating although that quickly stops when the Doctor finds himself in trouble. This is the main bit of the episode because the Doctor is accused of the murder of the servant that the masked figure killed at the end of the previous episode.

It is perhaps the rather implausible idea that the Doctor is a victim of mistaken identity and the Doctor decides that he is going to prove that he didn’t commit the murder by showing everybody the TARDIS. It’s quite clear that given time, the truth would have been revealed and the Doctor wouldn’t have needed to show everyone and their dog the TARDIS and its interior. The idea that the Police Box has been transported from the railway station to the police station is one that seems like an odd thing to do because the story doesn’t really benefit from the story moving to the police station.

The episode sees the introduction of the disfigured murderer who is revealed as the person who was going to be engaged to Ann and what I like is that there is a whole wealth of backstory that is explained and in just under a minute its all explained which means that the viewers attention can now be shifted to the new threat of George taking Nyssa thinking that she is Ann. All the shots on top of Cranleigh House is rather exciting and is the most actioned packed part of the episode. It’s seems quite sad that after letting Nyssa go, that George falls to his death. It is perhaps a rather downbeat way to end the story which is a shame really because Lady Cranleigh is the one that should have met a grizzly end.

The final scene takes place after the funeral which is a rare example of the Doctor and company not leaving the story the moment the threat is dealt with. The last shot is of a book that the Doctor is given which was written by George Cranleigh before he became disfigured. It’s a rather downbeat way to end things but as it’s the first pure historical story since ‘The Highlanders’ way back in 1966/67 it was a good two part adventure. The story worked for the length that it was and the performances were as good as they could have been because it seems that something that is quite amusing and listening to the commentary, its clear that the regulars don’t really like this story (Sarah Sutton is perhaps more positive but is then reminded that she might be biased), but I think that this is a much better story that they think it is and compared to the next story, this one is quite upbeat in tone. The ending is coming for one of the regulars, but the moment has been prepared for.

(570) Black Orchid - Part 1

Black Orchid is an interesting story because it’s the 120^th Doctor Who story and also it’s the first two part story since season 12’s ‘The Sontaran Experiment’ and by my reckoning, its only the 4^th two parter story in Doctor Who so far. This is the 37^th episode for Matthew Waterhouse and this means he overtakes Anneke Wills and Michael Craze, its hard to believe he has been in for 37 episodes and sadly he doesn’t do a great deal in this episode because he stands and watches the Doctor play cricket (more of that later), then he tries to dance and then he starts eating. This story was written by Terence Dudley who wrote the less than stellar ‘Four to Doomsday’. There was no way that Dudley could write a worse story in two episodes that his debut story.

The big selling point in this story is that Sarah Sutton plays two characters in this story. Not only is she playing Nyssa as usual but she plays Ann Talbot, she looks and sounds exactly like Nyssa and its great to see the effects that are used to have two Sarah Sutton’s on the screen. I think back to the bit in ‘Enemy of the World’ where the Doctor and Salamander appear on screen and that was 1968 so its interesting to see how well things have progressed in 14 years.

The episode starts off with the Doctor and company at a train station and the Doctor gets taken to be another Doctor and within minutes he is playing cricket which is in keeping with his outfit. The Doctor as it turns out is quite good at Cricket and there is good couple of minutes which is given over to this but its quite entertaining but this would never have happened during the Tom Baker era.

The story is moving towards a ball which is taking place at Cranleigh house and this means that we get to see Tegan dancing which is quite good and its good enough I think to get Janet Fielding on Strictly Come Dancing. Tegan doesn’t do a great deal but then again there isn’t a great deal to do. As an aussie, she appreciates some good cricket and then becoming friends with Sir Robert Muir (Moray Watson). I thought that Watson is very good as Muir because he seems like he’s just come out of Downton Abbey but is better. Lady Cranleigh is another good piece of casting because Barbara Murray also seems to have come out of Downton Abbey. Her disbelief that Nyssa isn’t a Worcestershire Talbot is amusing. Michael Cochrane is great as Lord Cranliegh, I could watch Cochrane is pretty much anything and here he is just fantastic. The Doctor spends the latter part of the episode in a dressing gown (which is an odd thing to see) and goes looking for something after someone pinches his fancy dress costume. After doing such a great job in playing cricket that he deserves the chance to take it easy.

It’s a much better episode for Terence Dudley than ‘Four to Doomsday’ and Ron Jones has done a great job in keeping the story going and its easy to see why the story is a two parter because I don’t think that there is anything that would sustain four episodes. The cliffhanger is rather good because the masked figure (who pinch the Doctor’s costume) has strangled a servant and is about to strangle Ann so the end to the episode is perhaps the most exciting part of the episode but that’s not a critiscm as the whole thing works very well.

(569) The Visitation - Part 4

The cliffhanger from the previous episode wasn’t the strongest one in the world so the episode didn’t start in a particularly good manner. In fact the thing is it takes about 10 minutes for things to really get going. Thankfully once it does then it really gets going. Going back to the beginning I must admit that the way the Doctor gets out of his situation was quite clever and I didn’t see it coming. Now once the story moves to London it seems to find its feet. This is the episode where Nyssa finally gets to active her sonic boom thing that she spent so long of the previous episode putting together.

The funniest sight in the entire episode and perhaps story is that of Adric kicking the android to stop it from getting inside the TARDIS. It’s just a ridiculous sight and it’s a funny moment just before the android is blown to pieces.

The companions are all working quite well together and Adric’s best moment (apart from kicking the android) is when he actually pilots the TARDIS. This is something that is a bit of a burning issue because really the Doctor should be the one piloting the TARDIS. Plus the old short hop thing is something that never really got done before Tom Baker’s final set of stories and yet its done with regularity during the Davison era.

When the story moves to London I thought that the sets were really good and the film look to it worked really well and I wish that the story had moved to London earlier because the quality is much better. This is where a fire starts which suggest that the Doctor started the Great Fire of London. I like the idea that the Doctor causes historical events. I seems like it was all meant to be and well thought out and not just added on as a last minute thing.

I really liked this story but felt that certain parts of it didn’t work quite as well as I thought it did in the past. The crowded TARDIS thing wasn’t as much of a problem as it has been so far this season but as a four part story I thought that it worked rather well and I liked the location filming and the writing has been rather good. Eric Saward gets a bit of stick from time to time but I thought that the historical aspect helped the story. Peter Moffatt directed this story with a nice sense of enthusiasm and even made the TARDIS scenes to be interesting which is quite an achievement bearing in mind how static they can be from time to time.

(568) The Visitation - Part 3

It was obvious that the Doctor and Mace weren’t going to be decapitated partly because they are two central characters to the story and secondly the scythe that is used is too big to do any damage to the Doctor’s head. Once that is over the story sees the Doctor and Mace spend a little while locked up and then they have a scene with the Terileptil which does serve one purpose and that it explains just what the plan is and its simply to wipe out humanity and it does a great thing of using a real historical event (in this case the plague) for the purposes of television. Now that this has been explained it feels like the story can actually build towards something.

Sadly Adric does suffer from not doing very much because he goes from the house to the TARDIS and spends a bit of time there talking to Nyssa and not doing very much before leaving and then getting captured. Nyssa is slightly more productive but she’s stuck in the TARDIS for the entire episode making the sonic boom thing which may or may not work. Tegan perhaps has the best time during this episode although that is perhaps stretching the term slightly. She is still under hypnosis and by the end of the episode she is about let out the rats. Despite not really doing very much when its laid out like this, its surprising then that it feels like the story moved along as a good pace.

The episode is significant for being the last time that the sonic screwdriver would be seen in the classic era. The sonic screwdriver was first seen in ‘Fury from the Deep’ back on March 16^th 1968 and it was written out in quite a good way when its destroyed by the Terileptil. I don’t agree with JNT that it was a easy way out for the Doctor because its not like he used it literally for ever situation. Anyway it wont be seen on this marathon until April 11^th according to my list of dates and episodes. This is the thing that stands out about this episode which might sound like there wasn’t anything in this episode but I enjoyed it very much and the death of the Sonic screwdriver is the thing that stands out about this episode.

The cliffhanger is perhaps not as strong as it could have been because there cant have been that much peril from Tegan opening a box but at this point in the story I can forgive writer Eric Saward for this brief weakness.   

(567) The Visitation - Part 2

The second episode doesn’t have John Savident in it (booo) but it does have a lot of other things which work very well. The cliffhanger of the previous episode was quite clever really because the Doctor had disappeared but when the episode starts it turns out that he went through a energy barrier which was designed to give the impression that the stairs led to nothing. The effect used to create this was quite good and even compared to todays standards it holds up.

This is the episode where the regulars get separated. After being inactive in the previous serial, its nice that Nyssa is given something to do and is tagged with the Doctor and as a result gets a lot more screen time. Tegan and Adric spend the episode together and its nice that they seem to be getting on with each other. There isn’t any bickering or back biting that would normally have happened between these two. They spend a fair amount of time locked up and they managed to escape which I found to be rather implausible but the objective really was to split up Tegan and Adric.

The Terileptil is introduced in this episode and I think that the headpiece is rather splendid, the rest of it looks like a bloke in a suit but the headpiece is quite effective and striking because it looks like the flesh has rotted and for 1980’s Doctor Who its one of the best headpieces that there has been. The only thing about the Terileptil that is a bit confusing is just what is its plan? Apart from that I thought that the Terileptil’s involvement in the story was well done and I think as a villain its quite good.

The cliffhanger is one that we have seen before and quite recently. It sees the Doctor (and Mace) about to be decapitated which is what happened during one of the cliffhangers in ‘Four to Doomsday’ so it seems like if it worked once then it could work again. I actually think that this one is more effective than the previous one because the darkness of the tone allows this cliffhanger to be more striking than in the rather bland surroundings of ‘Four to Doomsday’. So at the halfway point this story is moving far too quickly for my liking, I wish there were more episodes of this story left but I suppose that this is credit to Eric Saward and Peter Moffatt for producing this story and making it work as well as it has so far.

(566) The Visitation - Part 1

The Visitation is one of those stories that I have always had a soft spot for. It’s a story that seems quite fun although in recent years I have been watching this story with the amusing audio commentary on it. After being really impressed with the previous story I was hoping that the good form would continue. This era of the show was one story would link into the other and so once the opening scene was completed the TARDIS crew started they are referring to the events of Kinda. Now I think this is a good idea because it’s a bit like the very early days of Doctor Who where most William Hartnell stories would follow one another. There is more reference to Tegan trying to get back to Heathrow 1981 and the ‘goodbye’ scene between Tegan and Nyssa is very emotional and it’s a shame that its spoilt by the revelation that they have arrived at Heathrow, but just 300 years early.

The opening scene is quite fun just because it features John Savident who is perhaps best known for playing Butcher Fred Elliot in the ITV soap ‘Coronation Street’ from 1994 to 2006. Every time I see him in this I am expecting him to act like he did in Corrie. Sadly, Savident isn’t in the story for very long because as soon as the seen is over then that’s it. The scene also does a good job in setting up the main thing about this episode and that is the mystery of just what has invaded the house. We never see the person that kills several people and causes some damage.

The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric eventually leave the TARDIS and the first thing that strikes me about their first scenes outside of the TARIDS is just how nice the location footage is. I know that its something I have gone on about in recent stories but I cant help it. After spending the last eight episodes stuck in a studio, it was nice to be outside. The inclusion of Michael Robbins as Richard Mace was a masterstroke and is central to the reason why I like this story so much. He is fantastic from start to finish and after enjoying the performances from Richard Todd and Simon Rouse in the previous story, its nice that the strong performances continue.

This is an interesting opening episode because it sets things up nicely and the whole thing moved along quite quickly. The only thing that stood out and not in the best way is the robot that does appear. It looks very 1980’s and there is worse to come when there is a shot of its hand which looks like a cricket glove that has some gems on it. Apart from that this episode is just as fun as I have thought of it in the past and its good to have Nyssa back in the story.

(565) Kinda - Part 4

This episode is the one where there is some cracking CGI on offer. The beginning of the episode sees the departure of Panna but what’s quite clever is that the soul/essence goes into Karuna who really gets to get involved in the story and I think that Sarah Prince has been one of the underated people in this story. Due to the fact that there have been some stunning performances it was inevitable that she would fall down the pecking order but on a ‘normal’ story she would have stood out more. The standout performances from this story continue to be Hindle and Sanders. They have literally resorted to children because Hindle delivers a line to Adric and says “Outside is for grownups”. Both Hindle and Sanders are great from the very beginning where they are making people out of cardboard to the very end where they are back to normal and seem like friends. Both Simon Rouse and Richard Todd have been great and are probably my two favourite pieces of casting for this entire season.

The episode is building up to the big scene which actually starts in a rather nice scene with the Doctor and Hindle. Hindle tells the Doctor that the Kinda don’t like the mirror and it takes several minutes for the Doctor to twig what to do so when he does it leads the Aries being confronted in a circle of mirrors and this leads to one of the things that let the story down when it aired in 1982 and was released on VHS but is thankfully resolved on the DVD version. The big Mara snake is revealed and in the 1982 version it’s a bit disappointing, well completely disappointing however with the technology now much better what we get on the DVD version is a lovely snake which manages to make it look like it was apart of the original filming. It interesting that the Doctor doesn’t actually have to do anything to stop the Mara, its all done with the mirrors. One of the rare (ish) occasions where the Doctor’s actions don’t really save the day.

After being out of the story since the first couple of minutes, Nyssa finally makes an appearance in this episode but its not until the last two minutes of the episode where she says she’s fine and goes back into the TARDIS. It’s a shame that Nyssa got used in this manner, it would have been possible to find a way where Nyssa could have been used better and not be part of the story. It was done well enough in the previous story so this is the only thing that I think Christopher Bailey did wrong with the story. Apart from that I thought that this was a cracking story. Some of it I didn’t really understand but on the whole I enjoyed enough of it to think that this was the best story of the season but knowing what is coming up I cant say this will be the case by the end of the season. It’s definelty better than when I first watched it many years ago.